【Brigitte Meyer】

A recent teaser showing an Oppo phone with the front camera completely hidden under the display piqued our interest: Could the Chinese company be Brigitte Meyerthe first to launch a smartphone that's all screen on the front, without any clumsy solutions such as notches or pop-up cameras?

Now, at MWC Shanghai, Oppo has officially unveiled its under-display camera tech, and while it certainly looks interesting, some questions remain.

Oppo calls the technology USC (short for Under-Screen Camera), and claims it's a "customized camera module that captures more light while leveraging optimized algorithms and AI learning to improve camera performance."

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Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In hardware terms, Oppo uses a "highly-transparent" material for the display, claiming it strikes the balance between the display operating normally and allowing the light to pass through the screen. Oppo says the camera module itself has a "larger" aperture and sensor, as well as greater pixel size, though it's unclear what the camera's being compared with.

SEE ALSO: Just because you can’t see these selfie cameras doesn’t mean they’re not there

Oppo also uses "zoning control" on the screen, controlling the pixels in the area above the camera; together these technologies allow sufficient light to pass through the screen that the under-display camera can work in typical usage scenarios, including taking selfies, face unlocking tech and video calls.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Put all this together, and you get a selfie camera that -- according to Oppo -- "approaches" the quality seen on mainstream smartphones. We'll read that as "not quite ready for production yet," and indeed, Oppo doesn't say when we'll see the USC camera in a phone that's actually being sold in stores.

Still, the USC camera is an interesting development and one step forward towards a totally notch-less phone. Oppo's launched a few innovative solutions for smartphones before, and while it typically took a while for them to reach the market, the company largely delivered on its promises.

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